


Fallen Sheffield

by The_Exile



Category: Fallen London|Echo Bazaar
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Mild Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bats required more than one city, so they stole Sheffield as well. After being thrown out of Fallen London, Lady Hildegard Argelmach, the Neath's greatest poet-in-exile, now lives in Fallen Sheffield. She finds herself taking on more than she can handle when a commission to retrieve certain artifacts from the University becomes complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The University of Sheffield

(Author's note: I have lived in Sheffield for about fifteen years, the story is mostly based around my favourite amusing locally based nightmares, it is more a Victoriana-style version of modern-day Sheffield than actually based around Victorian Sheffield, which I know nothing about. Any feedback or ideas would be awesome ^^.) 

“I suppose I should attend my lecture,” he told her apologetically, alighting from the chair he had been lounging in, straightening his papers and wiping off the worst of the honey stains before replacing them in his satchel. After their transaction, it was significantly lighter, “I promise to meet you again at the same time tomorrow.” 

It was widely believed that students of the University of Sheffield did nothing but lounge around drinking absinthe and sipping Honey and never attended lectures or wrote their essays. This was not true. A true student could drink absinthe, sip Honey AND write their essays at the same time. This explained the contents of most of their essays and, for that matter, the lectures; the lecturers were no different to the students, only with more experience under their belt, better constitution as a result and a lot more money to spend on Honey. The student whom Hildegard had been chatting pleasantly to over their afternoon breakfast of absinthe and Honey was also fairly wealthy because he was (like herself) exiled nobility and (also like herself) handy with a crowbar and a set of lock-picks. He also knew a lot about the Correspondence and had a good imagination, so they had a lot to discuss. 

Hildegard Argelmach was not a student. The closest she came to any kind of study were the nights she spent in coffee houses, writing poetry about how much she missed her home. Sometimes the poetry went off topic and then the waiter started screaming and bleeding from his eyes when he tried to read over her shoulder. Here, in the precipitous, semi-sentient death-trap known as the Tower of Arts, she was an unwelcome impostor. By the ancient laws bound into the very foundation stones of the Tower when it was constructed centuries ago, laws sealed into a contract with the Brass Embassy using the Chancellor's blood, the Tower always ate impostors first. Only if it had devoured all available impostors and was still unable to sate its dark hunger was it allowed to start on the students in order of rank (freshers first, then undergraduates etc.). The Tower of Arts was ancient and single-minded and cranky and insane, more so than the most senior of academic staff. It was always hungry. 

She heard the ravenous growls of the Paternoster, somewhere between the tortured wailing of a thousand condemned souls and the booming footsteps of a gigantic steel Golem. The architect responsible for the Paternoster had named it ironically; he was Brass Embassy and shared their unique sense of humour.

She had half an hour before it fully woke up. Her muscles tensed as she readied her umbrella and awaited her opportunity. As the platform sped down in another futile attempt to meet its twin in the middle, she sprang into its maw, her petticoats twirling.

It lurched and changed speed, plummeting past her like a guillotine blade. The attempt on her life had been expected; she feinted a dive for the platform, then hooked the handle of her umbrella over the roof of the cab, hoisting herself up onto the next platform. It was still determined to shake her off. With a hiss of steam, it lurched to a halt just as her feet landed on the platform, propelling her into the far wall. She put out her hands to balance herself, then regretted her move.

The Tower of Arts swayed nauseatingly in the direction she pushed it. The sudden violent movement, combined with Fallen Sheffield's permanent strong gales that congregated around the University for some unknown reason, had disrupted the fragile balance of the Tower's already dubious stability. It was about to fall over! Hildegard hooked her umbrella onto an overhanging cooling pipe and pulled with all her strength. Groaning in protest, the building righted itself, then started swaying in the other direction but allowed itself to be centered again with a gentle push from Hildegard, who was now clinging onto the umbrella for dear life.

All was relatively silent. The roar of the Tower's bestial intelligence was more subdued, like a tiger purring. Without other noises to distract her, she could make out the background whirring and clacking of the machinery and the hiss of steam. Or was it growing louder? Then everything went dark. Hildegard drew a deep breath. Her heart fell. She realised why the Tower was suddenly going so easy on her and hadn't tried to pitch her out of an eighteenth-floor window even once. 

It was luring her into a false sense of security, then down to its lowest floor, unlisted on the map. The inner workings of the foul machinery that kept the Tower from falling over altogether. Nobody ever left the Basement.

She reached behind the silk ribbon on the brim of her lace bonnet and turned on her Aetheric Goggles. The uranium inside lit up with a green glow. When she placed them over her eyes, she could see in the pitch darkness. The Paternoster had stopped altogether, so she could only go forward, deeper into the Basement. She heard the high-pitched chittering of bats above her head. The mechanical sound was uncomfortably loud now but the congregation of bats was so large and so close that it was clearly audible. No matter how many she smacked aside with her umbrella, more of the leathery-winged pests found their way into her hair. 

When she looked up, she saw where they were coming from; the bats were actually driving the machinery! They dove in and out of some infernal device that looked like a cross between a gyroscope, a hamster ball and a treadmill. It was connected to thick black pipes and copper tubes with myriad valves and whistles. As she peered at it, thousands of tiny glowing eyes peered back at her. They stopped, cried out as one, then moved swiftly in a formation that required far too much strategic thinking for the intelligence of an average bat. Their sharp claws and fangs clutched at Hildegard's dress. They were trying to lift her up off the ground – most probably to fed into the machinery! She swiped at them with her umbrella, desperately trying to keep enough of them off her so that she could at least retreat. Something that sounded suspiciously like bones crunched under her feet and she lost her footing. She screamed and held the umbrella over her head for protection as she scrambled in the white dust that stank of the grave and covered the lens, obscuring her vision. Dark shapes buffeted her, slashing at her with their claws.

" _Look behind you,_ " whispered a voice. 

She turned her head and saw, contrasted with the light coming from the cruelly inaccessible exit, a rope being lowered down the shaft. She dove for cover and scrambled towards it. To her annoyance, the bats managed to tug off her shoes and disappear with them back into their mechanical lair, away from the hated light, just as she grabbed the rope and began climbing to freedom.

She took the hand of her rescuer, noting its unnatural warmth and the oddly wide, yellow-pupiled, hawk-like eyes beneath the bowler hat. She didn't care. She was on the Ground Floor, inches away from the main exit. She ran until she saw something that she imagined probably smelled a little more like fresh air and looked more like daylight, although she had no idea what the Surface looked or smelled like. Then she sat on the steps until she could breath again and her heart didn't feel as though it was trying to escape from her chest. There were no students in sight. It was a busy time for lectures. There was nobody to eavesdrop on her private conversation with the Devil, nor anywhere to run if it went badly.

“I want paying double,” she gasped.

“For what, may I ask?” asked the gentleman in his refined, precise accent, “For not remembering the feeding times of the Paternoster when you were told in advance that your mission would require you to visit the Tower? I saved your life. I believe that means you owe ME. Although, business has been good lately, so it would not particularly inconvenience me to forget. You did at least do the job, I trust?”

She threw her handbag at his feet, “Two Correspondence Tablets and some Honey for your troubles.”

“I don't take Honey. Dulls one's senses, you know.”

“Where's my pay?” she demanded, wondering for the twentieth time today why she insisted on taking commissions from Infernals.

“Ah, but you haven't quite finished your errand yet!”

“You told me to fetch you the Tablets!”

“You were told by a contact from the Embassy to deliver the tablets to a contact from the Embassy. I am not the correct contact,” he said, “I am merely here to ensure the tablets arrive safely. The drop-off place is in the central plaza of the Far Gate, next to the fountain.”

She groaned. She had just escaped from one place full of unspeakable horrors that wanted to eat her soul and now she was required to run to another. Under the employ of a third. Not that there was really anything else in Sheffield any more.


	2. The Far Gate

A chill, mournful wind whistled through the remnants of broken columns, stirring up clouds of dust that obscured her from the view of the bats spying on her as she wandered through the eerily desolate streets of the Far Gate. This came as a relief to Hildegard, as a chill, mournful wind was infinitely preferable to a suicidal gale storm that was trying to push a twenty storey building down on top of you.

The paving of the dead and/or sleeping city was covered in patterns that followed no Earthly law of geometry, impossible shapes with too many angles at the wrong degrees, looping whorls that could fixate an unwary traveller to stand still until they died, eldritch sigils that told of maddening truth and depictions of terrible deities older than the stars. Were she not on a mission of increasingly dubious legitimacy and faintly aware of low, distant footsteps, it would be quite an interesting place to study, maybe even peaceful, in the same way that the world would probably be peaceful after Armageddon. In over fifty years of research, the scholars of the University were still not sure what the Far Gate was a gate to or from, or why it was considered 'Far'. Was it the last outpost of sanity before some great veil of reality was penetrated? Was it the last stop on the Boatman's slow but inevitable journey to the Far Shore? One of the most popular theories of the time was that the 'Far' referred to the furthest reaches of time, and that the Far Gate was in fact the ruins of the last surviving city. Opinions differed as to whether it was the last human habitat ever before the species became extinct or whether it was the last city to remain overground before the final contract was signed, or whether the two were one and the same, and humanity was being prepared, one city at a time, for the hour it was given the option of transformation into something else entirely or surrender to oblivion.

Navigation through the mind-warping labyrinth that was the Far Gate would have proven impossible were it not for the map given to her by the same Devil who had requested the errand of her. The alleys and side-streets and plazas would have drawn her just far enough into their maw that she could no longer see the way she came in, their beguiling glamour erasing all memory of the world outside, then swallowed her alive in a web that seemed to shift like the fabric of a dream whenever she turned a new corner. The map was not an overall map of the Far Gate. Such a thing would have given her a migraine to even glance at. It was simply instructions that the Devil insisted would work this time around. Only the once, mind you.

“The Devonshire Cat, the Devonshire Cat...” she muttered to herself as she walked, using the well-known rhyme to focus her mind. There were more versions of it than anyone could keep track of, and it was something to do, something that would introduce order to her thoughts and keep her sane, just to remember a few of them and maybe invent her own variations, “Soulless as a bureaucrat! The Devonshire Cat, ate the Prosecutor's cravat! Laid the Tower of Arts down flat! Would you like some gin with that?”

Suddenly, she turned the corner and heard the soft trickling murmur of the Fountain that marked the dead centre of the Far Gate. How the water of the Fountain ran eternally, or why it bothered with the effort when everything around them was empty and silent as a grave long vacated by its necromantically reanimated former resident, was another mystery beyond the finest minds in the University. Of course, the first thing the students tried was to drink the water. They were never seen again. Several of the many statues that ringed the ancient monument to a fallen dynasty looked suspiciously like students frozen into morbidly humorous expressions of slow realisations. One had turned to run before the curse hit them. Of course, they might just be statues of people who looked like scared students. Lots of people looked like scared students. These were probably the least disturbing of the statues, both in terms of the activities that the poses suggested and the familiarity of the species of humanoid. Hildegard tried not to hold their gaze too long. There was no need to linger. As soon as the parcel was exchanged for the pay she had been promised (thirty bottles of Muscaria Brandy was definitely worth it, she told herself repeatedly) she could leave the way she came and never return to this place.

That was what she had said last time...

“The Devonshire Cat, The Devonshire Cat...” she whispered shakily under her breath.

“Plays the Devil's Advocate?” suggested a familiar voice.

“'Advocate' doesn't rhyme with 'cat',” she corrected the Devil automatically.

“It doesn't? Oh, yes, you're quite right. How inconvenient,” he shrugged, “Oh well.”

“I have your parcel,” she told him, holding out the bag but not quite relinquishing it. She stared at him pointedly.

“Also convenient,” he mused. He snapped his fingers and there was a noise like the grinding rumble of moving stone, a noise that reminded her of a lid being moved from a sarcophagus. She peered around briefly and saw that the statues were moving. At first their pace was ponderous but they sped up at an alarming rate once they fully remembered how to move. In the few seconds that she was distracted, before she recalled how much more dangerous a smiling Devil could be than an obscenely lurching animated statue, the Correspondence

“I was given the Embassy's word I would be led back out of here!”

He shrugged, “Death is a way out of here. A way out of virtually anywhere, in fact. A rather convenient service, if you ask me. Oh, and to demonstrate that we do not rescind our word, here is your pay. Farewell, Lady Argelmach.”

The Devil gave her a mocking bow before leaping straight over one of the channels that led from the fountain in some kind of intricate water feature, disappearing from sight and leaving her crate of brandy in the dust on the floor. She made a swipe for him with her umbrella but completely missed. Unladylike words escaped from her lips as she swung the handle of the umbrella around to face the first wave of her statuesque assailants.

She had no delusions of a chance of survival. If she ran, she would be dooming herself to a longer but equally fruitless lifetime of wandering in paths that were definitively not circles, nor any other conceivable shapes. Her best chance was to try and take as many of them down with her as possible and hope that her method of death was nothing too unpleasant, prolonged or difficult to return from, or at least that some cat, bat or rat was watching her and would report the glory of her final battle to its eternally inquisitive masters, to be immortalised at least in the annals of Fallen Sheffield's history. 

Something was always going to get her, eventually.


	3. Charon on the River Don

“Oh, come on, that was a really obvious loophole,” commented the Boatman, “No wonder you can't play Chess. No offence meant, ma'am,” he added as an afterthought. He was in a good mood. He hummed a jolly funeral dirge to himself as he rowed his boat at a leisurely pace down the dark, silent river that occupied roughly the same space as the River Don. It had fought off being replaced and now they overlapped each other like the seams of a cheaply constructed, badly fitted coat. You could throw things off the side of one river into the other. If you missed, it would cycle straight through and hit you on the head. Not that there was much within grabbing distance that was the right shape or size to fling. It wasn't much of a game but there were few alternative entertainments that didn't involve the risk of someone tricking you into betting your remaining life energy on them.

Personally, Hildegard found it more enjoyable just to have a nice long chat.

“None taken,” she smiled, “It so happens that I am rather more glad to see you than usual. I was somewhat concerned that my fate would be a little more... non-standard.”

“There's nowhere you can go that I can't find you,” he said. If he was trying to be reassuring, the results were mixed, “You really need to take more care of that body of yours. They look durable but they wear out faster than you might think and once you've broken them, you can't fix them again. Also, you should probably go and get your soul back.”

“Ah,” she said, “I thought I felt a little off. Relatively speaking. You didn't happen to see where it went, did you?”

“It was snatched. Probably spirifered. I saw them head in the direction of the Castle Market,” the Boatman told her.

“Please tell me they have not sold it yet!” she sighed in exasperation. Telling her own soul apart from the thousands of others on sale would be difficult enough. Tracking down the buyer once it had been sold would be nigh on impossible, even with her Embassy contacts. She didn't think it would be prudent to ask any Devils for help. She hadn't yet found out if the betrayal at the Far Gate was an order from the Embassy or the ambition of a greedy individual.

He shook his head, “I can still tell it's yours. They take the identifying marks off when they sell them. Besides, they would have at least given it a quick wipe down.”

She pouted at him, “My soul is as innocent and untainted as a newborn kitten!”

His laugh was as hollow as his eye sockets, “You don't know many kittens, do you?”

“I suppose you're right. I probably meant 'my soul is innocent and untainted compared to a newborn kitten'.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” he said, with a shrug of his bony shoulderblades, “I suppose you'll be somehow conniving me or bribing me into letting you off any moment now.”

“If its possible,” she said, staring down at the dreary grey waters, “I am afraid I may have left it a little late, what with this being the last stop before the terminus...”

“It is?” she couldn't tell if he was genuinely confused or simply being reticent with answers. He could be maddeningly unreadable at times. 

“Is it? You should tell me some time. In any case, I imagine I'm quite useless to your superiors without a soul. Whatever would they weigh? I am sure they would not permit me on faith alone to list my own sins. They would most probably send me straight back again to find it. You would have one more unnecessary journey and I would have a black mark against me that I could have avoided.”

“Sounds convincing,” he admitted, “I can only return you to the place where your physical body lies, I'm afraid. You wouldn't want me to return you to anyone else's body. You wouldn't believe the problems it causes.”

“But I have no way out of the Far Gate! I would most probably return straight away! It would be a huge inconvenience to you!” she fluttered her eyelashes at him.

“I suppose I may know a route or two,” he sighed, “If you don't tell my superiors, that is.”

“I have no desire to meet your superiors at all,” she told him with heartfelt honesty. 

The boat carried on in silence. The Boatman was distracted by another passenger wanting a game of chess. He seemed quite skilled and the game lasted for a good long while, its atmosphere intensive, full of strategies beyond Hildegard's limited comprehension of the game. She closed her eyes and thought of the Far Gate, her body lying at the foot of the great steps that led down to the fountain, in a state of disarray that she desperately needed to remedy. She did not particularly want to return but it was better than all the available alternatives.

 _Wait a minute,_ she thought, _if that is my body and I don't have a soul, what exactly is in the boat right now?_

Just as she was about to turn around and voice the urgent revelation, the Boatman's face faded like the pleasant dream of someone with very odd tastes in pleasant dreams who was just waking up. Just my luck, she thought irritably as she stood up and dusted down her torn dress.

The Boatman had told her a route directly to the Castle Market but she decided to follow it only until she left behind the last warning marker that she was within the twisted geometry of the Gates, then hailed a hansom cab to her house. She paid with one of her bottles of sherry. It was sad to see such a useful bargaining tool go to waste on something as mundane as public transport but at least it was enough to pay for the return journey. Once she was back at her house, a tiny cramped room above a Bohemian cafe that doubled as a honey den, she stashed away her earnings and took out her hunting rifle, her most heavily armoured bustier and her sharpest-heeled boots. Her trained fighting weasel at her heels, she felt a lot readier to take on the battlefield that was the Market.

She also pocketed a few Echoes, once she remembered that money was occasionally useful when one might be expected to buy things.


	4. The Castle Market Bazaar and the Devonshire Cat

As its name suggested, the Castle Market held the appearance of something that would be expected to occur if a bustling bazaar mated with an impenetrable fortress (although, Hildegard mused, that would make it not impenetrable). A small army of Steel Clay Men (there had been an abundance of steel and a shortage of clay for several years but they still considered themselves to be Clay Men and were unquestioningly accepted by the forward-thinking Clay Man community) stood guard at the entrances, which were twenty foot high oaken, steel-reinforced drawbridges. Colourful banners with the emblem of every Master of the Bazaar, the Brass Embassy, the Empress and the crest of the city itself were draped from the battlements. The trading started before the gates, with street vendors and the stalls of merchants that had been too late in the month to acquire a trader's pass for the Market itself, as well as the usual ensemble of outdoor theatre performances, buskers with dancing monkeys, beggars, pickpockets and an extremely loud Prophet of Doom. They were welcome diversions during the wait to enter the front gates of the Market. 

She was searched by a humourless Steel Clay guard who, upon finding no weapons disproportionate to her self-defense requirements and no obviously explosive substances, waved her inside with a warning of 'no taking honey on the premises!'. As she entered the Market, she was deafened by the noise of so many people in such a confined space, each trying to shout louder than the others in order to be noticed first. Worse, it smelled of everything, all at the same time. At first she could do nothing but stand in place, as though she were trying to anchor herself against a great tidal wave. She felt a hand in her pocket and smacked the offender over the head with the butt of her rifle. A theatrical voice implored her to buy a parrot in a golden cage that had been captured in the untamed wilds of Deepest Rotherham. Another voice told her that the first merchant was lying out of certain parts of his anatomy that it was physically impossible for him to talk out of, and that she should instead buy a love potion. Someone else made a snatch for her purse. She was less gentle the second time and she heard a thud as the criminal fell to the floor, then a yelp of complaint as someone stood on them. The entire place was designed to beguile and distract. It was a perfect set-up for her to be robbed or worse, even with so many guards watching. She had to concentrate on the business she had come her for, finish it as efficiently as possible, preferably with minimal casualties then leave. 

The soulmongers were easy to identify. Not only were the large glass jars of brightly glowing, bobbing wisps of light that swirled in amorphous patterns that occasionally looked like anguished faces a dead giveaway, as was the fact that almost all their customers were Devils in neutral-coloured business suits, they were also set a little way apart from the regular chaos of the marketplace. They lived in the realm of the serious traders, alongside the silk and tea merchants. They rarely sold their goods over the counter, instead organising larger scale shipments, writing the time and date in their vast iron-rimmed ledgers. Hildegard used the same technique as she did to return from temporary death to locate her soul. She thought intensely about it, concentrated on nothing else but the essence of herself, what made her unique, her qualities that shone most brightly, whether it be like a candle of hope in the darkness or the furnaces of Hell amidst the endless blackness of the Abyss. She felt rather than saw a regular pulse of energy, a faint but insistent chime. 

She opened her eyes and stared straight at a Devil who had picked up a glass jar and was shaking it up and down before putting it to his ear. 

“Hey, YOU, that's my soul!” she declared, snatching the jar from the startled Devil.

“Are you going to pay for that?” asked the shopkeeper. Two guards were lumbering up to her.

“I am NOT paying for my own illegally obtained soul! I did not sign an Infernal contract on this soul! I demand to see your license this instant!” 

“I could sue you for falsely accusing me of spirifage!” he said, taking an official-looking paper in a glass frame from the wall behind him and holding it out for her to see. She scrutinised it for possibly three seconds total.

“That's a fake,” she declared, “I've worked for the Embassy before. I know what a fake license looks like.”

“HOW DARE YOU!” he roared, waving over the guards, “Arrest her! Throw her out!”

“Actually...” said the Devil in the suit, halting the guards with a disapproving glance. Hildegard blinked. Only moments ago, he had been leaning on the table, casually appraising each soul in turn. He didn't seem at all interested in the commotion until now. Could it be that he was on her side in this matter – one of the Devils who preferred to keep law and order in the cities that they considered their property, who detested unlicensed soul trade, if not because of their detestable practice of stealing souls that had not been offered freely, at least because they hated competition? If so, her predicament was nothing to do with the Embassy. A Devil like this would follow orders. If he was not trying to permanently inconvenience her in any way, no such order had been given. There was corruption involved in the Embassy, or at least an internal dispute. If she helped them out with it, she would be in their good books again, as far as the Embassy could be said to have good books. Their 'not currently eternally damned' books...

Hildegard's ruminations were disturbed when she suddenly realised that she was no longer holding her soul's receptacle. She whirled around, levelling her rifle. There were no urchins in sight. Urchins didn't bother the serious traders. It was too much effort. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a wildly blipping, swirling red light and two glowing green eyes disappearing into a dark corner of the Market. Ignoring the yelled warnings of the guards, she bolted after the feline thief. The cat tried to squirm through a grate, too small a space for a human to pursue it, only to discover that its prize was also too large and bulky to fit through the hole. Hildegard made a grab for the cat but it clawed her across the back of her hand before scuttling away in the other direction. The pain seared down her entire arm as though she had plunged it into a fire. It was a struggle not to black out. The deranged voices whispering to her from the edges of her unconscious mind, waiting to hunt her through dreams from which she would never wake up, soul or no, helped her to stay awake. 

She ran through the Market, only dimly recognising objects and reacting to them instinctively at the last second, not caring what was happening around her other than the distance between her and the cat. A table was in her way so she jumped onto it, spilling bolts of fine silk onto the filthy floor, before crashing through another stall, upturning the parrot cage and smashing the door open so that the bird flew free, squawking its delight and leaving the merchant a goodbye present on his head. Vials of bright-coloured liquid fell to the ground, shattering and occasionally exploding or setting neighbouring stalls on fire. The overall mood of the cacophony of voices suddenly sounded much angrier and most of the guards now had their beady red eyes centred on her, except for the two that were dragging the recently uncovered spirifer away screaming. The Devil looked smug. He had moved on from the soul trader stalls and was eating some candy floss.

Hildegard grabbed random objects and threw them at the cat as she sprinted towards the door, screaming all the expletives she knew at the top of her voice. She couldn't shoot at it or throw anything too heavy in case she damaged the jar. She wasn't sure how strong a cheaply constructed soul reliquary was or what happened to the contents if it was broken. She didn't want to risk it – not with her own soul, at least. A gang of urchins spotted her and joined in the chase, laughing as they made a game of trying to catch the cat. She was too busy to check whether she still had her purse. It didn't matter any more – you couldn't buy things from a cat. A horse-drawn carriage came rolling in the opposite direction. The cat darted in front of it at the wrong moment and startled the horse, causing it to rear up. The cat hissed at it, its fur on end, and tried to turn to run. At that moment, a grubby-faced young girl managed to grab it by the scruff of its neck. She lifted it up triumphantly, her eyes glittering with avarice.

“Oi, lady, 'ow much you want for...” she began. Then she took a closer look at the cat. Recognition dawned on her face and she threw it at Hildegard, screaming. The entire pack retreated as one and melted away into the crowd. 

Spinning around in mid-air, the cat adjusted its position so that it landed expertly on its feet before Hildegard. The glow of its eyes was eerie in the dark, like a second set of twin moons in the sky. Hildegard hadn't realised how dark it was getting...

“You won't last long now,” whispered a voice somewhere above her, “Even with your soul, you won't recover from your wounds. You'll never be whole again. Why do you persist in pursuing me? Your fight is futile. You should surrender now while you still have anything left of yourself.”

“What do you even want with the wretched thing?” she whispered. Her limbs felt heavy. It would be so simple to surrender. The pain and the madness would be gone. The urge was so strong, it was like swimming against a current just to remember why she was fighting in the first place.

“I will feed it to my kittens. I have lots of kittens and they are very hungry. You wouldn't let a litter of adorable kittens go hungry, would you?”

“He said not to trust kittens.”

“You can go and tell him he was right, very soon.”

“You... you're the Devonshire Cat, aren't you?”

“That I am,” it agreed.

“I thought so. No other cat is quite as dangerous.”

“I'm flattered,” it purred, “I could give you something in exchange, you know. Something I can guarantee will be of equal value.”

“There's nothing I need more than I need my soul back, thank you.”

“You said yourself that it was wretched. Worthless. You want a bargaining piece in the instance of your final death? This thing you call a soul is more of a liability than an asset. I have something that even the Gods accept as a bribe. Secrets. Deeper, more closely guarded secrets than any available in the Bazaar. I found them in the Oubliette. I thought the prisoner in there was dying, when I heard those particular ravings. I thought he might die just from the strain of the knowledge on his mind. I don't think he can be allowed to die. Something on the other side might find out. Don't you want to become the only other person to ever find out? You would have real power in this world. Not just favour with the Embassy, like another dog squabbling for a place by its master's feet. Not just a few more bargaining chips in some glorified game, where the only satisfaction is in causing the ruin of some stranger you'll probably never meet. Real, forbidden secrets. Real power.”

“To do what with?”

“Anything you want to. You're an exile, aren't you? You could trade them for a way home.”

“No I couldn't,” she gasped. It was becoming difficult to talk now. The pain had crept into her chest, “Because... it wouldn't be me... going home...”

Dragging her arm forwards, she scrabbled blindly around. If the Cat was so close, the jar would be there too. She felt something cold, smooth and solid. She swiped at it with a sweep of her hand, putting all her last desperate strength into the motion. Wrenched from whatever held it, it fell for an indeterminately long time, then smashed. 

Please return to me, she willed it with the last of her mental strength, envisioning the soul she had seen in the jar and calling out to it, fending off the dark urges that tried to creep into the forefront of her mind from the denied id, the part of her that longed to surrender. I'll find something more interesting to surrender to, she told it, and gave it a few suggestions. Some of them were very interesting indeed. Her dark unconscious agreed with her on that point. She was feeling more herself already.

“Suit yourself,” said the cat. As the light grew brighter again, her entire form bathed in a brilliant crimson radiance, she saw it yawn and sidle off into nowhere on Earth.

She vaguely wondered if its offer had been serious. There would be plenty more souls without owners, more prey for it to hunt. There was probably someone out there who was genuinely better off just taking the cat up on its offer. Someone whose identity was less important to them, because they hadn't fought to protect it for long enough.

She resolved to write a poem about it when she finally got a few moment's peace and quiet.

* * *

Hildegard's wounds never did heal, so she stopped trying to make them heal. She had her arm replaced with a clockwork mechanical limb. While it wasn't as flexible as her own arm and it was a bother to keep having to wind it up, it was a lot sturdier and stronger and she never felt pain in it any more. The rest of the pain that the Cat caused her, including the wounds to her mind, cleared up as her soul gradually synchronised with her body again. It had been mostly spiritual. Only a phantom ache remained, a twinge that flared up occasionally when she was forced to walk past a Church. The nightmares of glowing green eyes and whispered voices and oubliettes soon gave way to different, equally interesting sets of nightmares, most of which she could counteract with her old friend Prisoner's Honey. 

Her ill health had forced her to remain bedridden for several months. During this period of convalescence, she had a wealth of spare time to think seriously over certain matters. The odd few times when she didn't quite pull through, she talked the matters over with her best friend over a glass of wine and a game of Chess, which she failed abysmally at (the Chess, not the wine – she was good at wine). She had a plan. It was a better plan than selling her soul to cats. It was also a better plan than simply being more careful, a strategy that had never worked out for her in the past, what with her random periods of extreme bad luck. No, she needed something slightly more permanent.

Firstly, she had to work out how exactly one removed the blasted things. Secondly, she had to take up sculpting...


End file.
